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I’m a passive job seeker by trade – Employment Brands

June 18, 2013

I often find myself looking at job specs, as you do. In doing so I can often get carried away looking at the employment brand to get an understanding of the culture and often I am disappointed by the lack of content.
Thus I’ve been thinking about the importance of employment brands in my job searches lately and how much of difference it has been making in me deciding to engage with a company. And surely enough there are a few things I typically look for so they pass my ‘I like you’ test.
These days, checking out job descriptions of several companies for a longer than an hour is almost impossible (I have a short attention span), because they are just dead boring. The moment I see a Company video or current employee’s experiences however, I can be hooked to find out more. Usually I find myself checking out their blog, signing up to their newsletter and because I’m a social media zombie, checking out their twitter and linkedin profiles. Lucky me, it forms the research tasks in my job description.

This is about what the many graduates and students must be coming across when they are looking for a position. Whilst they are trying to develop their own personal brands, it becomes even more difficult for them to connect with an employer because they have no idea what that organisation is like to work in. And it certainly doesn’t help when the job spec is just simply filled with buzzwords. How can they stand out if all companies ask for the same thing?

Now for security reasons, agencies may not advertise the hiring company’s name however the sign of a good agency is when they understand what their client wants. Bring on less buzzwords and more interactive job adverts i.e. I want a job advert which sets a challenge or tells me the goals I am to achieve or tells me from an employees viewpoint, what it’s like to work there. This tells me about your culture and your employment brand and if it matches, then relevant and good job seekers will come in abundance. This sort of advertisement is done largely by in house recruiters but if agencies are to assert themselves as true consultants in the hiring process, they need to catch up with their in house counterparts.

Something tells me the agency left behind is the one who didn’t change their advertising strategy.